Janis is a young boy who lives in the Soviet collective farm "Dawn." His father opposes such a collective farm's creation, meriting himself an enemy of the Soviet people— therefore, Janis betrays his father by adopting his uncle as his caretaker. What unfolds is a tale of revenge on the frontier of a growing Soviet empire.

Retooling the classic Soviet propaganda story about "Young Pioneer" Pavel Morozov— a subject of many books, songs, plays, and even a film by Sergei Eisenstein— Dawn is a powerful visual opus about manipulation, freedom and memory. The fifth feature from celebrated Latvian filmmaker Laila Pakalninapremiered at Tallinn Black Nights, Seattle and Fajr, and was selected as Latvia's official submission for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film.

Trailer

Interview

In an exclusive interview with Filmatique, Laila Pakalnina discusses the role of propaganda, manipulation and humor in her films.

The Labyrinths of Narration: Chaos and Mayhem at the Latvian Collective Farm in Dawn

In an exclusive essay for Filmatique, Dr. Jarmo Valkola explores how Laila Pakalnina's filmic choices indicate the mixing of personal, public, social, historical and cultural levels that establish not only a random collection of perspectives, but also an audiovisual orchestration of the labyrinths of narration.

Press

"A visually ravishing love letter to vintage Soviet cinema... The beauty of Dawn lies in its richness, ambiguity and willfully elusive intentions... Pakalnina has constructed an arrestingly beautiful and original work from the collective folklore of her nation's troubled history"

"This is a highly stylized and almost absurdist affair that reclaims and re-interprets the imagery and tenets of Soviet ideology, to turn it into a biting satire on conformity and indolent power. Scenes such as an attack on a church combine the formal classicism of traditional Russian filmmaking (with part of Pakalnina’s inspiration coming from a lost Eisenstein script) with a slightly Brechtian air of unrestrained chaos. The movie has some striking black-and-white cinematography, courtesy of renowned Polish documentarian Wojciech Staroń, as well as some brilliantly staged set pieces"

"Director Pakalnina's monochrome landscapes are impressively comparable to those of Andrei Tarkovsky or Alexei German Sr., yet she accomplishes them with a lighter touch. Dawn brings farce, grotesquerie, and tragedy together in a highly stylized cautionary tale against becoming a cog in the wheel of political systems"

"Dawn was inspired by a Soviet propaganda story about the young pioneer Pavlik Morozov. Back in 1935, this story was the background of Sergey Eisenstein's film The Bezhin Meadow. Having already made October and Battleship Potemkin, Eisenstein was one of the main directors in the service of Soviet propaganda, and the tragic murder of young boy devoted to communism strong enough to betray his own anti-communist father seemed to be the perfect anthem of the Soviet power... Laila Pakalnina wanted to use just means of propaganda and made them work against themselves... Dawn is the type of movie that makes film buffs want to go to festivals"